I think part of the problem is new players get shafted on loadouts. When I made a chaos or a LSM I had pretty decent options with my presets that were functional. The orks don't really have that at all. They have loadouts to play super tacticly not like orks. Imo chnage up the ork presets to get rid of the dok heal item consumable but give them mid tier armor instead on the shoota and slugga boy presets, give the painboy preset at least the sicky slugga or the poison add on to his melee since thats a HUGE part of being a painboy, loota is fine, and give the stormboy preset something.

As far as eldar go like said before thats an issue of getting people to play them to begin with. Tough faction to sell tbh. I mean they are really fun but they just dont have that spark other factions have that draws people to 40k. Maybe give the swooping hawk default something more cause a new player isnt going to make much outa that one while a vet player is gonna earn enough via FD to unlock everything they need for everything else pretty quick.

Before I joined a guild I bought one of the Ork pioneer packs on top of the Xeno pack that already gave me access to the game. The reason for this was because at the time the Orks where "Free to waaaarg!" and I thought it would be cool to have a "Big Boss" type of character to lead the green tide into battle. Once the announced that there would be no "free to Waaaarg" feature that idea went right out the window (and considering the fact that none of the pioneer stuff is even available ingame I pretty much wasted my money there).

Orks in EC do not feel like Orks that I imagined they would be like. Their weapons should be dangerous and deadly to both the target and the shoota IMO. Orks should be tough and haphazardly blowing stuff up! In my mind Orks should have big explosive weapons that do massive damage but also have a chance of blowing up in the wrong spot. I think it would be great if Orks had some sort of better respawn to show that there are more of them, even if that means that they die more often... Orks need to be FUN and crazy!

Eldar is a tricky one... I've never really been a fan of the figures myself other than the harlequins (and they already said that there was no way they are adding them). Perhaps if they had more sneaky gadgets like tripwires and sensors. Eldar always seemed to me like the "secret agent" type of race to me, like they should be sneaky, fast and cleaver.

Most new players that dont really know WH40K would tend to go with something that they are more familiar with (HUMANS) and the guild base really shows it. I believe Orks have one or two major guilds and I have no idea how many large based guilds the Eldar have (one?) and I know many players hate to fight agianst guilds so it only makes sense that new players would lean towards Chaos or LSM.

I main as a LSM but I do have characters and play the other races. For me I would be more inclined to play the other races if:

Orks had a faster respawn and more toys that blew up. Life for the Orks should be fast and fun and end in a bang! If there was an option to instantly respawn at the home area (as opposed to a captured objective) I think that Orks may be more appealing to play. Give that pocket rocket a big bang but have the chance of it shooting off in a totally wrong direction! Hell, let squad leaders "encourage" troops to fight harder by hitting them in the head.

Eldar need more gadgets and tricks... at least more customization, sheesh they have nearly nothing to show for anything. Bring in some teleporting spiders maybe? Eldar where pretty popular when they where OP and now that they got nerfed people don't care for them anymore? I have very little to go on since I've never really payed attention to the Eldar, even in the TT they where never attractive to me so I have no idea how to encourage more players to lean towards this race to be honest.

I think there's an obvious solution here.

As a player I look at the three characters I've created. a CSM, an Ork and a LSM. Yet I always play LSM, why*?

Well he's the one I've progressed furthest in. Do I really want to loose all my toys and go back to derping around in stock armour with a stock boltgun, and doing the bloody random raffle of crappiness praying for something decent?

Basically the system forces you to play one faction. Therefore I would suggest making advancement and requestion points account wide.
Then that way I can advance any character by playing someone else.

*There's actually two reasons, but one is more to personnel taste. I created the Ork to play with mates on the F2W system, and I created the CSM to have a look and see how to get a proper plague marine, not an Estaz-plague marine like you can create at the moment. Seeing as you can't I shelved him.

Orks already have the "WAAAAAGH!" mechanic for respawns. Other than that, adding different respawn mechanics might inevitably break most of the current maps. The game is already based greatly on rushing points as it is. People have to stop looking at the game in tabletop terms because the tabletop is simply balanced differently than a lobby shooter is. Also, giving orks a completely arbitrary instadeath is going to render the faction unplayable, on account of having a faction in a game of skill tied to RNG to decide wether they survive an encounter or not. That might work in the TT where you are one person overseeing dozens of units, and losing one to a broken gun can be fun, but when you control one unit and one only and you could be turning a game, having RNG take the fun away will kill the Ork faction.

Also, the rokkit launcher already shoots in random directions, I don't really know what you're talking about. The only thing it doesn't have is AoE, compared to say a plasma cannon.

As for Eldar, the problem is that they are a niche even in the TT. Adding more tools would mean that the other classes would be at a disadvantage if they have to prepare loadouts for 2 factions that play roughly the same (based on guns and sturdy foes) while having one that plays radically different (sneak tactics and gadgets that would make soloplay encouraged). Remember that we only have space for so many custom loadouts, spread across different classes.

What bE has to do is stop incentivizing the creation of more LSM, since they are so focused in all their interviews to catering to the faction that is already harnessing half of the game's population. They keep catering to them and showing toys for them, when they are the faction that could best survive an exile of players, and meanwhile all they do is promote that more and more people to swap there, even if it is just to try them out.

I know people want variety and flavor to their races, but the more differentiated weapons you add, the more balance complicates itself, in a game in which balance is already an issue. Maybe make weekends in which you give RTC for playing as the smaller factions, or give bonus XP or some sort of carrot on a stick for people to play as other stuff, but at the end of the day you can't control what people want to play on account of their personal taste. What you can control is what people find more convenient to play or try out, with added incentives that will make them go out of their favorite race, but doesn't tamper with the entirety of the game's supporting pillars.

Shame that Miguels idea of 'Free to Waaagh!' never materialized. At least we'd all have Orkzez to kill

A multi-sided fight does sound interesting but I don't think anyone would actually work together (lacking enough in PuG's which are all your faction) although it might work on defence missions i.e. 20 SM verse mixed faction each tasked with holding so many points based on how many there are

Incentives like boosts of exp, renown and AP for least populated factions would be a good start.

In future when elite spawning system will be revamped, more access to elites for least populated factions would also go a long way.

Pretty much sprinkle underdogs with good stuff until population reaches intended size.

With how the system is set up it's a bit convoluted to put this in right away but I was thinking about maybe a join as random button which would join you as the faction currently most in need of people, but that would assume people actually have 1 slot for each faction.

Why would you do that though? Maybe xp/req bonuses for doing it, and maybe you can choose which faction you want the xp/req to go to either before or after match.

it's a war 40k games is hard to make fans switch faction: i don't think that the game have a sufficent % of non war 40k fans that can be attracted by a faction bonus.

I was goin' wit' da idea dat it'd be a fing fer regular matches when a game don't got enuff o' one faction. When only so many Orks can get found fer a match against Space Marines dey add sum Chaos Marines ta' da ork side so da game ain't a landslide victory due ta' lack o' playa's. When foightin' ta'getha' ye get treated as allies, such as gettin' sin penalties fer krumpin' dem and wot not

This moight help wot wit' how blokes moight not wanna switch factions off da bat. But mayhaps dey moight change minds and try anuvva' lowa' population faction due ta' foightin' alongside 'em and seein' fings from da uvva' side